BRACAU 27 BLOG'S

Digital Media student Madonna Arsan reports on her latest module, where the students have been placed at actual work places to get a first hand insight into the business:

When Management Specialization started and we had to find an agency, Åkestam Holst was in our top three list. We thought that it would be a great opportunity to work shadow at the best ad agency in Sweden and when we contacted them they were excited about having us there.

To learn as much as possible, and gather material to the report we are delivering at the end of this module, we are observing, interviewing people and attending internal and client meetings. I can say that we are feeling appreciated, people ask us questions and are interested in who we are and about Hyper Island.

The idea of the final report is to write about the agency from a fresh point of view, our experience, our thoughts and a proposal for improvements. Since we are studying digital media and Åkestam Holst is more of a traditional ad agency our focus will be on their interactive part.

Just after week I feel filled with new knowledge. First I thought I would feel lost being so near the industry and experience the work at an ad agency but after attending meetings it felt like I was at school. Not only the atmosphere in the office reminds me of Hyper Island but also the structure of work and much more.


Madonna Arsan

Check out Madonnas portfolio!

The boys and girls at Digital Media Stockholm 2009 have been busy building up the hype over their forthcoming class page at dm09stockholm.com. New short webisodes have been released during the past weeks, which let readers follow their work and also engage directly with them. Tomorrow tuesday the students will paint a mural and visitors can still vote on the theme of the mural (right now "Animals" seem to be winning).

Hyper Island student Carin Nilsson writes about the latest module for the Digital Media Karlskrona 2009 class:

We are now in the beginning of the module Design Specialisation 1 which is being held by Gregory Henriques. This module contains about six assignments and a lot of tight deadlines. Every student in our design group have found themselves a mentor that will give feedback on everything we produce during this period of time and will also be interviewed about the role of a designer. The mentor could be an old student from Hyper Island or someone else from the business.



Our first assignment in this module was to choose a designer that was active between the years 1725-1990, I picked Alexey Brodovitch that was the art director of the fashion magazine Bazaar for 24 years. Yesterday we found out that we were going to design something in the spirit of the designer we had chosen. I did the cover for the childrens book James and the Giant Peach which was kind of tricky since Brodowitch was a designer with a very elegant style who used a lot of white space and black & white photos. But I found some illustrations that he have made that was much more splashy and I tried to get inspiration from those in my illustration but at the same time make usage of the white space and keep an elegant look just like he did.

Carin Nilsson

Check out Carins website.

The digital media community Chinwag has started a series of events that cast light on trends in the digital media and marketing industry. On the 29th of January in London the theme was the worsening skills shortage in the digital media sphere:

People are moving around and big brands are offering glitzy packages. But this is just the industry cannibalising itself, not growing the digital gene pool.
As demand for digital media and services increases, companies are feeling the squeeze as talent is not coming into the industry in sufficient numbers. Many businesses struggle to train staff and augment their abilities.

Laura Jordan Bambach, head of Art at Glue London and co-founder of She Says, was asked about the british digital media educations, which she considers to be old-fashioned, and compared it to the Hyper Island method:

- There are some fantastic examples of courses around the world and Hyper Island is I guess the most succesful of which. Their graduates are desperately seeked by every single agency, I'm sure not only in the UK. The way they teach is very unique and I don't understand why that way of teaching is not adopted in other places around the world and certainly in the UK. It is very succesful, it is all about group working.

Listen to the whole podcast at Chinwag Live.

The Digital Media program in Karlskrona has developed a nice website at Creatives Unlimited. Here is the teaser trailer for the site:



Check out the developments at Creatives Unlimited as the full site is revealed.

The new Interactive Art Director site is really lovely. Don't take our word for it, it seems like the site is getting more internet support than Ron Paul right now.

Leading tech weblog Boing Boing, currently ranked fifth in the world by Technorati, writes:

A group of students at an "Interactive Art Director" course at Hyper Island in Sweden have produced a pitch-perfect "educational film" about their field; the short's a great little homage to the golden age of industrial films.

Motion graphics authority Motionographer writes:

Swedish design school Hyper Island has launched an interesting new 32-week Interactive Art Director Program.

While the objectives and assignments are built around interactive projects, the interesting bit is Hyper Island’s decidedly forward-thinking attitude about decompartmentalizing the learning process. Instead of asking students to piegonhole themselves as motion or interactive or graphic designers, the program basically throws everything at students and allows them to develop their interests and strengths over time.

By rooting all the projects in online experience, HI grads should be well prepared for the reality of shrinking broadcast and print budgets. As with any program like this, everything hinges on the students (not, as is often believed, the teachers or facilities). If HI has attracted the right kids with the right drive, everything else will fall into place.

Four students built the IAD site itself, proving that HI at least is willing to stand behind their pupils. Let’s see what the rest of them can do.

Patrick at Dog Opus writes:

Behold the cutting edge design education of tomorrow, available to an elite few right now: Interactive Art Director ‘08
I can’t see myself in this sort of environment (I am simply not hip, beautiful, or pretentious enough), but I’s shure do like watchin’ them there movin’ pitchers. Seriously, I love the Flash animation. Superb.

Belgian designer Grapplica writes:

Hyper-Island is a two-year university course in Sweden focused on on-line related technologies, products, services and businesses. As far as I know the only University on earth to lecture on Interactive Art Direction. They've recently launched their course targetted website.

The TP Wire Service by PR and management legend Tom Peters, voted second most influential leadership professional last year by Gurus International, lists the site on "The latest headlines on the stuff that matters".

Hotwebber puts the site on their listing of "The hottest websites on the net".

Belgian web design portal Irie featured the site on their "outstanding websites" page and it's readers has voted the site the fourth best out there at the time of writing, with an average score of 4.5/5.

British based web/graphic designer Matt Northam writes:

If you've never heard of Hyper Island, then I question your commitment toward being the source of all knowledge regarding Swedish design schools. However, if that's not a aim of yours, then fair enough.

But really though, you should know about Hyper Island (and their illustrious graduates). As a incredibly small example of how cool it would be to attend there - their building is an old prison. I find that cool :)

They've recently unveiled a new course packed to the brim with things that are undoubtedly going to produce another wave of stupidly talented interactive media professionals. Following a cursory glance of their website, it sounds like the course that I'd jump at if I had the chance and someone else would fund my mortgage for the duration. It's crazy stupid dope (that's good). The website has been done by some current students. It says it all. Oh to be young again ;)

Finally, the site has been linked from a wide range of blogs and web portals, including:

Joshwebb
Design You Trust
Bulls Eye
What Should I Name This?
Today Nominateds' Comics section
Reform Revolution
Update or Die
Whye We Rock


Sebastian Suarez-Golborne

Hyper Island student Elin Cederborg, at the Interactive Art Director program in Stockholm, visited a seminary at Konstfack by industrial design professor Teo Enlund. Here is her report:

Professor Teo Enlund at Konstfack held a two-day seminary, concerning a controversial subject with huge effect on society. The seminar also deliberated around the significance it might have on designers. A wide range of engaged speakers elucidated the subject.

Generally spoken (and it´s not possible to be anything but general in this case) the discoursers were split into two camps, the first half claims that consumption is not the problem – it is the solution. Jonas Frycklund from the Confederation of Swedish Enterprise writes about consumption from a positive view and claims that it is consumption which leads our development. Social welfare comes from consuming - the more exclusive and expensive - the better.

One can find it easy to believe that increasing consumption demands a lot more resources, several problems with our environment has decreased the last decade even thou our consumption has escalated. The more it escalates, the better our lives will be and we will afford environmental improvements at the same time as our technical development will continue. Active consumers and producers will have the capital to find better ways for us to consume and produce. If we decrease consumption our economical development will come to a halt and there will be no benefits in doing so.

"McDonaldization" might not sound so pretty, but it will bring many small restaurants in its backwater.
-People don’t want possibilities; they want the exact thing that they want. Not more or less. An indicator of social welfare is a prospect of choices. Our problem is about consuming non-pareto optimal products; we need more economical welfare to consume better products. It is as simple as that.
-Oh no! says approximately the rest of the world. Editorial and former scientist at the royal institute of technology - Christer Sanne tells us that there is absolutely no doubt regarding the development of our aggrandizing disparities in this world, our ravage consumerism and unequal workloads, which we really by this time would have been able to eliminate with some good and reasonable common sense.

We should be able to live in harmony with nature and share our work. In 50 years we have doubled our consumption three times, and we are not a bit happier! What defines this social welfare? What we need to do is to share our work and abbreviate our work hours, and develop smarter ways to consume. If we all get together with our fireworks it will turn into a gigantic one.

Between the anti or not anti-consuming fight, two journalists from the Swedish radio tells us about a trip to China they made, disguised as Swedish merchandisers. It was the only way to get a insight into the deadly dangerous factories from which almost fifty percent of all our products come and in which more than 136.000 Chinese die every year. The most common cause of death is called Miner´s lung. Someone is paying for our flash prices real bad.

Another aspect of consuming came from brain-scientist Martin Ingvar and his "Theory of mind", which basically attends to different basal-brain functions development in an evolutionary social point of view. Ingvar answers questions like "Why do we buy and use things that are dangerous to us?". A rather significant wondering if you think about it. Not to mention his first question: "Why do we have a brain?". I have to admit I actually never wondered.

Anyway, the interesting stuff is not a question about consuming or not, it is about how we use our resources regarding consuming. According to Al Gore we have approximately seven years to deal with this issue and if we shall accept the challenge maybe it is time for us as designers to look a bit higher and start redesigning the product systems, let them become more environmental, helpful and effective. Redesign our world famous wall of ignorance.


Elin Cederborg

Goodby Silverstein & Partners, who visited Hyper Island this fall, have been named "Agency of the Year" by prestigious industry magazine Ad Age. In an interview in the magazine Rich Silverstein said the following:

We used to recycle talent from Wieden [and] Chiat -- a mutual-aid society of creative professionals," says partner Mr. Simpson. New hires include a rapper known on YouTube as Jelly Donut, a car expert who Mr. Goodby says knows almost everything about every car that's ever been on the market and a founder of an improv group called Killing My Lobster. It also includes students from Sweden's Hyper Island digital-media and management school, where one of the agency's recruiters, Zach Canfield, went to teach a class to get to know prospects before hiring from a résumé.

Read the full story here.